That moment when you've got a new favorite
Piece of media. So, I just played through To the Moon. And it became my favorite. Not just my favorite video game, but my favorite piece of media in general. To the Moon is somewhere between an adventure game and a visual novel, and if more adventure games were like this I'd like the genre a whole lot better. What do I mean by that? Focus on progressing the story rather than coming up with convoluted puzzles. Although it still has a clunky control scheme (you have to point-and-click, or use the the arrow keys which is awkward in 2014). But that is To the Moon's only flaw. It wants to tell an outstanding story and it does it amazingly well. The main plot follows two scientists, Neil and Eva. They work at a corporation that uses Inception-like technology to give dying people their last wish, sort of. They implant false memories so they can die happy. Today's client is a man named Johnny Wyles. Like the title suggests, he wants to go to the moon. The only problem is that he doesn't know why. So you explore his memories and learn all about his life, and there is a lot of tragedy in the back story, mostly involving his late wife River. But there are so many twists with so many touching moments. I'd love to talk about this game really deeply, but it isn't something that should be spoiled. Like at all. Let me just say that it takes a very talented writer to make you laugh, and another type of talented to make you cry, but to do both in the same story is exceedingly rare. On top of the tear-jerking moments there are some really comedic scenes. One of them is when they try to do the inception part and try to influence Johnny to go to the moon throughout all of his old memories (most of them were extremely sad or heartwarming). I really want to talk about the intricacies of the story though, because those are my favorite parts. Especially when everything comes together. Throughout the story you get bits and pieces that don't seem to go together. Johnny wants to go to the moon and instead of figuring it out we're instead learning of his autistic wife. Yeah, it's all but stated that River is autistic (more specifically asperger's syndrome) and the writer(s) have really done their homework on this. This also leads to a final revelation where there is no bad guy. Some moments in the game are extremely tearjerking; some moments are cute/charming, like the memory of the night before Johnny's wedding; and some moments are downright terrifying, like turning on the light to a room of origami rabbits. Also, there's a revelation in the story that managed to surprise me, and I wouldn't dare spoil it. Yeah, even though the ending is completely laid out for you at the start there's so much to be spoiled. No matter what, Johnny is never really going to the moon. None of the tragedy is going to go away, and yet the ending still manages to be incredibly uplifting. And apparently it's Neil & Eva's job to go through stories like this, which is pretty much lamp-shaded at the end. I guess you could think of it as a much more dramatic psychonauts. It's available on steam and I cannot wait for the sequel. Category:Miscellaneous